Each year, on average, a major magnitude-8 earthquake strikes somewhere in the world. In addition, 10,000 earthquake-related deaths occur annually, where collapsing buildings claim the most lives, by far. Moreover, industry activity, such as oil extraction and wastewater reinjection, are suspected to cause earthquake swarms that threaten high-value oil pipeline networks, U.S. oil storage reserves, and civilian homes. Earthquake engineering building structural designs and materials have evolved over many years to attempt to minimize the destructive effects of seismic surface waves. However, even under the best engineering practices, significant damage and numbers of fatalities can still occur.
In particular, damage caused by earthquakes to critical structures, such as nuclear power plants, regional hospitals, military installations, airport runways, pipelines, dams, and other infrastructure facilities, exacerbates an earthquake disaster and adds tremendous cost and time of recovery. Even low-energy earthquakes resulting from human activity can cause significant damage. For example, wastewater reinjection practices used by the oil industry resulted in over 900 earthquakes in 2014-2015 in the state of Oklahoma, with a recent 2016 earthquake of magnitude 5.8. These continual earthquakes, although many may be small, can threaten extremely high-value above- and below-ground pipelines that control oil supply, storage, and transport in the U.S. This can present major economic and environmental concerns.